


The Fire Inside

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24431176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Between the drugs and Dad and everything else, Ward genuinely doesn't recognize what's happening at first. It's been so long since he's had a heat that he doesn't even know the signs anymore.
Relationships: Ward Meachum/Danny Rand
Comments: 15
Kudos: 69
Collections: Heat Fic Summer 2020





	The Fire Inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirty_diana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirty_diana/gifts).



Between the drugs and Dad and everything else, Ward genuinely doesn't recognize what's happening at first. It's been so long since he's had a heat that he doesn't even know the signs anymore.

He's only had a few in his life. Most were in his teens, some in his early twenties, in all cases dealt with swiftly and surely by Dad. Sometimes there were quick hookups with paid-for alphas. More often, the solution was a course of sedating drugs that made him fuzzy-headed and miserable, but also knocked the heat down, if not entirely out. He'd spend a few days being out of it and sore and horny and desperately craving touch, jerking off a lot in private and, when in public, holding himself together through a combination of terror of Dad and sheer obstinate back-against-the-wall stubbornness ... but it passed, it always did.

And it hasn't actually happened in a really long time. Stress can knock down heat cycles, that's a known thing; so do drugs and alcohol, depression, insomnia, anything that interferes with the body's natural rhythms. He's gotten used to it, is the thing -- not having the up-and-down hormone cycles that omegas normally deal with. His emotions are all over the place for completely different reasons.

So the oncoming signs, the crankiness (even more so than usual) and weepiness (which is worse) and the hunger for touch and the general arousal and even the urge to crawl into anywhere he can find that's dark and quiet and just den up for a while (the word _nest_ doesn't cross his mind) ... it's not so different from his normal life that it really sinks in at first.

What makes the penny drop is, of course, Danny.

They're seeing more of each other these days, since Danny got back from his Hand hunt off in Asia. He's living down in Chinatown, rooming with Colleen, sensible beta Colleen who doesn't really like Ward much. And there's some part of Ward that thinks she's perfectly right, he's _terrible_ for Danny; Danny should stay far away.

But Danny doesn't seem to have gotten that particular memo. They're not quite ... _close,_ not exactly. They're not exactly to the coming-over-and-hanging-out level of comfort with each other. But company business keeps them in touch with each other, and sometimes there are lunches that are personal, not business-related.

And it's nice, being around Danny.

Nicer and more comfortable than Ward ever thought it could be, honestly, spending time with an alpha. There is always something fraught about being around alphas in general, even Joy. Board meetings have always been hellish, since the board of any major corporation is usually at least 50% alphas, and Rand's is no exception. It's always a fight, a nonstop fight with himself and his own instincts and theirs, keeping himself standing at the head of the table, telling them what to do. He's good at it only because he's had to learn to be. There aren't a lot of omegas running Fortune 500 companies -- actually very few, and Ward knows he mainly has Dad to thank for it. He's learned to hide most of his omega tells, and the majority of the time he generally passes for a beta if nobody gets close enough.

But being in close proximity to alphas is still difficult. There is always that deep-down part of him that simultaneously yearns to be dominated and wants to fight back. Ward has no idea if he's just a particularly broken omega, because he's nothing like omegas on TV, or the omega halves of the bonded pairs you see happily walking around. Omegas are supposed to be polite, obedient, a little moody, but generally calm and submissive.

Ward is -- definitely not that. There is a belligerent part of him that is going down fighting to his last breath, and one of the things it's going down fighting against is his body's instinctive tendency to submit when it gets a hit of alpha pheromones. This is what's allowed him to dominate the boardroom at Rand. He doesn't _enjoy_ it, and hell, there's some part of him that still wants to drop when an alpha walks into the room. But he doesn't. He won't. He can't.

But Danny ... 

Once they managed to get past the early posturing, at least, it was never like that with Danny. The thing about most alphas, starting with Dad, is that they throw Ward into an automatic threat response. Every alpha that he's ever been around was someone he _had_ to push back against in order to keep from being steamrolled. And that included Dad's hired alphas, who were usually pretty rough; they weren't exactly nice guys. (In his more realistic moments, Ward suspects it was on purpose. There was no way Dad would have given him an alpha he could have bonded with.) So he's never really been able to let his guard down around alphas. Even in the throes of heat, he's always had to be ready to fight back.

In his very earliest days with Danny, he reacted that way, but he hasn't had that vicious, prickly defensive reaction to Danny in a long time. Of course he still wants Danny to bend him over his desk and fuck him raw, because, well, alpha, but what's different with Danny is that he thinks he might not fight it if Danny did something like that.

There is something about Danny that just _gets_ to him. It's just -- it's Danny's competence, his confidence, that fucking _sureness_ that he carries around with him everywhere, even when it's the kind of sureness that carries him 20 miles in the wrong direction before you can catch up with him.

He's _good,_ Danny is; not just in the moral sense, though that too, in a way Ward never can be. But Danny is also _good at stuff._ Ward has gone through all the various shades of bitter, miserable jealousy about it, and for a long time he blamed it on Danny being an alpha -- blamed Danny himself for being an alpha, even back when they were kids, when it wasn't really clear which of them was going to present in what direction ... but he knew, he _knew_ that it would turn out this way, because things always came so easily to Danny, after all, and of _course_ he'd get the thing Ward wanted most in life.

But now that they're adults and he is finally, slowly learning to see Danny without the bitter lens of jealousy twisting everything between them, Ward has begun to realize that Danny is good at things because Danny works his ass off at it. He's got this absolute intensity about him when he wants something, the kind of intensity that can lead to him practicing the same move 18 hours a day if he has to, until his hands bleed and his muscles tear, until he gets it right.

And, god help him, there is a part of Ward that yearns with everything in him to have that intensity turned on _him._ Wants to feel those sure, square hands on his own body. Taking him in hand, doing whatever Danny wants -- because Ward _trusts_ him somehow, on some deep-down level that even Dad couldn't destroy. He wants to give himself over to someone, and he can't help feeling that Danny would never betray that trust, would never hurt him.

Ward hates this about himself, this instinctive urge to be dominated, to have someone take him in hand and tell him what to do and _care_ for him. In retrospect he thinks it was probably why he was so susceptible to both Dad and Joy. Omega submission isn't just about sex. There was (and is) always that part of him that just wants to be kept, to be part of something bigger than himself, vital and needed and _useful._ He aches for it; he needs it like he needs air.

Omegas attach. It's what they do.

And there was no way Dad was going to let him attach to anyone outside the family.

So in a way, being friends with Danny is sticking it to Dad even after Dad's gone. Dad would _hate_ this, the fact that they're getting closer and genuinely enjoy each other's company and don't have the sort of posturing relationship that Dad always had with Wendell. It's not an alpha-alpha thing or even a typical alpha-omega thing, at least to the extent that Ward knows what that's supposed to look like, based on TV and Joy's relationships with her omega boyfriends. It's more like the calm, mutually friendly relationships that betas have with each other.

At least until Ward comes into heat.

*

Danny has this way of charging into Ward's office (and into most places, honestly) like he owns the place, like he doesn't even have to knock. It's part of the alpha thing, Ward is pretty sure. Danny is, in many ways, about the most un-typical alpha that could possibly be imagined, sensitive and open, attentive to others' needs. Gender isn't destiny, of course; alphas aren't all domineering dicks, and omegas aren't all cute and sweet -- Ward himself is proof of that.

But Danny can be a stereotypical alpha some of the time, and this is one of those days when it's on full display, as he barges into Ward's office and flings himself onto the edge of Ward's desk.

"You stood me up," he says.

"What?" Ward says, because he's just been hit with a full double-barreled dose of Danny. It always does things to him, Danny taking charge, but this is ... this is _a lot._

"Lunch. You. Me." Danny leans forward, across the desk.

Ward pulls back a little. Danny smells good today. Danny smells _amazing._ He could happily just lean forward and press his face into Danny's neck.

Before he can even wrap his head around how much he wants it, Danny freezes, and pulls back a little.

"Oh," Danny says, and his eyes go a little wide. "Oh, _right._ I kind of forgot ... it's that, um, time for you, isn't it?"

"What?" Ward says again, blankly, and then the penny drops, and drops _hard._

Oh. Right. That would explain the way he's been feeling, the crankiness and the muscle aches and the fuzzy-headed inability to think clearly. It also explains, much more thoroughly than he'd like, how it's all he can do right now not to catapult himself across the desk and wrap around Danny just to feel someone else's skin on his.

... yeah. This is awkward. 

They stare at each other for a minute, and Ward feels a kind of hysterical laugh rising up in his throat, second cousin to a scream, at the realization that they both actually managed to, for the most part, forget this aspect of each other for a while. He doesn't think of Danny as an alpha, most of the time, and apparently Danny doesn't really think of him as an omega either. And, well. Here they are. _Fuck._

"Are you okay?" Danny asks. He's still leaning over the desk. _Way_ too close. God, he smells good.

"Fine," Ward says, pulling back a little further and then subtly trying to kick his chair back from the desk a little bit.

"Are you sure? Because -- I mean, you aren't -- I'd know if anyone had claimed you, Ward --" Of course he would. Right. Scent. "-- and no one has, and it's not really safe, to go through it alone, and even less with someone you don't know very well, I mean, things can _happen,_ Ward. Bad things."

"I've got it taken care of," Ward lies promptly.

"You've got someone to help, you mean?" Danny's looking at him in that way Danny has, worried and anxious, the way nobody ever looks at him. "You know it's dangerous, right? It's hard on your body, on your heart, especially if you haven't had a heat in a while. I mean, I lived in a mystic monk city and even I know that --"

"Did you hear me tell you I had it under control?" Ward snaps. Oh right, _there's_ that belligerent stubborn side, the part of him that has always pushed back, pushed and pushed and pushed --

 _Omegas are so feisty sometimes,_ Dad had laughed, talking to someone, Ward doesn't even remember who; he just remembers the dismissiveness, as if his anger never counted, his struggle to push back never _meant_ anything, because he never could have won when he went up against Dad.

But he's never been that way with Danny, not since the beginning; not since he realized there was no need to push back at all, because Danny isn't going to trample all over what he wants and what he needs.

"I know, I know," Danny says, backing down exactly when Ward doesn't want him to. Fucking Danny Rand. "I'm not trying to alphasplain anything --"

" _Alphasplain?"_

"Colleen, she said I do that sometimes --"

"Please never say that again," Ward says in exasperation, and it's almost normal, except for the tense, quivering awareness of his impending heat thrumming under every movement, under every word. Ward promises lunch later, a rain check; he does it blindly, just to get Danny out of his office, to be alone and free of the compulsion to touch him, the desperate urge to lean back in his chair and just have Danny's mouth on his neck and Danny's weight on top of him ...

After Danny's gone, he feels cold. Icy cold. Like the early days of going off drugs, when his body's heat regulation was fucked all to hell.

He is _so_ screwed.

*

Ward really doesn't want to go back on drugs, any kind of drugs, but his resolve to go through heat unmedicated and alone lasts through exactly one night.

It's absolutely miserable. He's never been this restless in his life. Not to mention this horny, but it's really not the desperate urge for sex that's killing him. This is fucking New York, after all. He could go out and find meaningless sex and empty claiming with an alpha or a beta at any hour of the night. Dad never had any trouble hooking him up with somebody. He could find an underground heat club with a quick google search if he really wanted to.

No, what he wants is to be _touched._ To be held. To feel someone else's hands (okay, let's face it; Danny's hands, Danny's callused, competent hands) all over his bare skin; to just _let go,_ to hand himself over into someone else's care and keeping, 

He wants _Danny._ Not just Danny's physical presence, although he wants that too, craves it, so much he could cry. He wants Danny's _everything,_ Danny's laughter and the way Danny misses cultural references that everyone else gets and Danny's utterly weird taste in music and ...

Fucking _hell._

Heat is a bitch.

He makes it through 'til 6 a.m., not sleeping, pacing and going down to the building's gym to work out and coming back to his apartment to drink endless cups of coffee. He waits that long because he doesn't want to risk waking up his new assistant, Katie, before she's already up, and he really needs her to be on his side here.

He calls her just after six. She answers after two rings.

"Katie?" He's pretty sure that he's got his voice under control, sounding solid and together and nothing at all like he feels, shivering and aching, with cold chills running through him and his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest. "I need you to help me get some heat suppressants. We manufacture them, don't we?"

*

Katie knocks on his door a couple of endless hours later. By this point he's shaking with need. He was wrong; it's worse than drug withdrawals. He wonders, distantly, if it's like this if there's not someone specific that you crave, someone you've already kind-of, sort-of started to bond with. Or maybe it's something to do with coming off a long dry spell. He doesn't remember his early heats being this bad.

Katie comes in with a paper bag clutched in her hands. She takes him in with a long, eloquent look, and Ward backs off, aware that he's wearing his shirt and pants from yesterday, his hair probably a mess; he hasn't looked like this, he thinks, since he went off drugs. 

Thank God she's a beta. Her scent isn't really doing much to him. If she was an alpha, he'd probably be begging at her feet by now.

Which makes him belligerent and furious. His default state of dealing with the world. Maybe if she was an alpha, he'd have punched her the minute she walked in the door.

"So ..." Katie keeps hold of the package. "You know these are illegal without a prescription, and I could be charged with a felony just for giving them to you. The fact that you run the company doesn't actually change the law."

"I know," Ward says shortly. "I just don't care." Somewhere inside himself, he dredges up something else, an awkward gratitude. "Thank you."

"You better be. First month on the job and I'm walking off with drug samples." She hesitates, her fingers twisting the bag. "These aren't going to just _stop_ it, you know that, right?"

"Just give them to me." The last time he felt this desperate, this pathetic, he was sticking his hand in a car door. 

"But listen, Mr. Meachum," Katie says earnestly. "They're supposed to be taken in the lead-up to a heat." She draws a breath, looking nervous. Around the office, they don't really talk about Ward being an omega. It's one of those things that's known, but not discussed. "Once you're already ... um ... it's not going to just --"

"Did you hear me tell you to give it to me?"

Katie obstinately clings to the bag. She wets her lips. "I talked to Lindsey at the lab, I mean, not officially, but on the down-low. She said after a heat's started, a megadose can stop it, but it's risky. Essentially you're overdosing yourself. You're really not supposed to do it unless you're under a doctor's supervision."

Ward holds out his hand, the fingers trembling. Katie hesitates for an endless moment and then puts the bag in his hand.

"Just please keep in mind this is illegal and I don't want to be party to your untimely death," she says with a wan smile.

"I'm not going to die." He didn't survive twelve years of undead Dad to die of heat suppressants.

"You'd better not." She pulls herself together again, giving him a stern look, almost alpha-like. "I don't want to break in a whole new boss. Should I say you're calling in sick today?"

"Yes, please," Ward says absently, turning away, shaking the prescription bottle out of the bag into his hand.

He is only vaguely aware of Katie leaving.

*

She actually wrote out instructions, quick scribbles on a folded piece of Rand company stationery. He's supposed to take half the bottle to get the initial megadose effect she was talking about, and then a tapering dose afterwards. Katie has scribbled down a list of possible side effects that were presumably given to her by the lab tech:

\- joint paint  
\- nausea  
\- migraines  
\- mood disorders  
\- heart arrhythmia  
\- fever  
\- chills  
\- panic attacks  
\- seizures (rare)  
\- stroke (rare)  
\- aneurysm (rare)

Sounds like this is going to be loads of fun.

Ward shakes out the contents of the bottle into his hand. Little yellow pills, a lot of them. A full-body shudder rolls through him as he remembers how familiar this used to feel, the hydrocodone in his hand, promising not relief exactly, but ... escape. The only kind he could ever get from Dad.

He sorts the pills carefully, pours half of them back in. Then he looks for a long moment at the little heap of yellow pills in his palm.

Last chance to back out.

Another wave of the full-body blind _neediness_ of the heat ripples through him, and he pours a glass half full of water and swallows the pills with it.

Then he goes back to bed, and lies there shivering with heat-stress until he falls into a twitching kind of sleep.

*

It's a wave of nausea that wakes him up, prickling from his toes to his scalp. He's half sitting up before he even knows what's happened, and then a spike of pain stabs his temples and he doubles over in a painful dry heave.

He doesn't actually get sick, and he flops back on the sweat-soaked pillow and takes a few deep breaths. There's sunlight coming through the blinds, and he's uncomfortably hot. He has no idea what time it is.

After a little while, he gets up, waits out a wave of dizziness, and lurches weakly into the bathroom. He feels like absolute shit. He can't even imagine eating right now. He takes a small sip of water from his cupped hands, rinses his mouth, and spits it out instead of swallowing. Every part of his body hurts. The air itself feels like it's sandpapering his skin. He never knew it was possible for skin to be this sensitive. The orbits of his eyes are so sore that it hurts to move them in any direction.

At least he doesn't really feel that overwhelming urgency to mate. And none of the really dangerous side effects so far. Progress?

He wobbles back to the bed, picking up his phone on the way. There are six missed messages from Danny, and he falls onto the bed with a jolt that sends a brutal stab of pain through his skull. When was lunch with Danny supposed to be? He can't think clearly. Was he stupid enough to reschedule it for today? That seems muddle-headed even for him, but it's the only reason why Danny would be pestering him like this. He taps out a vaguely worded dismissal ( _couldn't make it, sorry, next week maybe_ , he doesn't even remember what he types or whether it makes sense) and pushes the button and lets his hand drop over the side of the bed with the phone in his loosely curled fingers.

He has a vague feeling he's supposed to be taking some pills to start the tapering-off, but that would involve moving.

*

"-- Ward, Ward, god, what did you _do_ to yourself -- Ward, hey, _Ward_ \--"

Ward wakes up flat on his back with Danny crouching above him, and as the situation slowly sinks in there's just something in him that's crumbling in relief -- _finally finally fucking finally_ ... he could sink into Danny's scent, could just roll over and wrap around Danny and never move again --

And then he jerks back to something like coherency, and gasps, a hoarse bark of air. "Off," he rasps out. The close proximity is practically killing him, even with the suppressants. 

Danny sits back, but doesn't leave. Instead he curls an arm around Ward's shoulders and helps him sit up.

"What'd you do to yourself?" Danny asks. 

Ward can't answer for a moment. It just feels so _good,_ Danny's arm around him and Danny's warm, strong, solid body against his, even with both of them fully clothed. The actual horniness that goes along with a heat is still beaten down by the drugs, there's just a vague dry _empty_ feeling, but the touching ...

He didn't know it was possible to be this skin-hungry.

"Hey, Ward," Danny says again, tense and urgent. "Talk to me. What'd you take?"

There's alpha command in his voice, probably not something he meant to put there, but the room must be positively saturated with heat pheromones; there's no way it's not affecting both of them. All Ward can do is nod vaguely toward the nightstand.

Danny leans forward, keeping an arm around Ward. He picks up the bottle, reads it, looks at Katie's handwritten instructions.

"Heat suppressants? _Ward!_ These things can kill you."

Ward tries to unstick his tongue from the roof of his dry mouth, and manages to get out, "Not dead yet."

"God," Danny mutters. He gives Ward a little shake, and even _that_ does things to him, the take-charge alphaness of it all. "Ward, you're probably dehydrated, you've been lying here who knows how long ... look, I'm gonna get you in the shower and get you hydrated, okay?"

"Okay," Ward mumbles. It's the easiest thing in the world to just give in, letting Danny manhandle him out of bed. If this is the only kind of touching he's going to get during this heat, he's going all-in on it. It's all he can do to keep holding himself a little apart, and not drape himself all over Danny, who clearly doesn't want it; if he wanted it, he _must_ be aware of Ward's scent, the desperate neediness of it. Danny, with his haphazard approach to impulse control, wouldn't be holding himself back if he had any interest in Ward that way -- but why _would_ he, especially finding Ward like this, a stinking mess tangled up in sweat-soaked sheets ...

"Drink," Danny orders, and there's a glass of water pressed into Ward's hands. He reacts without thinking, to both the command in Danny's voice and the damp, cool surface of the glass reminding him of how thirsty he is. He lifts it mechanically to his lips and gulps the water down. 

It's just so good to ... to not have to _be_ for a little while, but not in the same way as the oblivion of pills and alcohol. This is nicer. He sags against Danny, who still has an arm around him and makes him drink two glasses of water. 

Then Danny starts stripping his pajamas off.

Ward makes a faint sound in the back of his throat. He just. Wants. 

He looks up and meets Danny's eyes briefly, and he's startled even through his drugged and heat-addled haze to see that Danny's eyes are dilated with lust.

Of course it's affecting Danny, of _course_ it is. It couldn't possibly not be. But he's still unprepared for the depth of it, the sheer unbridled _wanting_ that he sees there, for a moment, before Danny wrenches his eyes away.

But in spite of it all, Danny's hands are ... not aggressive, not rough, not even the sort of aggressive that Ward really _wants_ right now, when all he can think about even through the daze of the heat drugs is Danny throwing him down to the bed and thrusting into him. Danny is very much in charge here, but also very gentle as he peels off Ward's sweat-sodden pajamas and then thrusts him into the shower.

Hot water is no substitute for physical contact, but it's ... it's something, and by the time Danny comes back with clean clothes, turns off the water and starts drying him off, he's actually feeling a little better, less miserable and awful, a little more energetic. Of course, what he wants to use that energy for is the problem, and it doesn't help that his erection is embarrassingly obvious. But hell, it's a _heat,_ it's not like even someone as sheltered as Danny doesn't know what it does to a person.

"I can do that," he mutters when Danny makes motions that indicate he's plainly intending to help Ward dress. He regrets his own stubbornness as soon as Danny steps back and leaves him alone, but stubbornness is all he's ever had to get through situations like this, and it's not like he's about to stop being a contrary bastard now.

"Do you think you can eat something?" Danny asks. He's withdrawn as far as the doorway of the bathroom, but Ward is still intensely aware of his scent, of his physical presence, of his ... everything.

"No." You don't, really, during a heat; he does know that much, as few of them as he's had. Your entire body is turned to a different purpose entirely. Like a spawning salmon. And that makes him laugh, turning his head aside and burying the choked-off laugh in his elbow.

"Yeah, you're really out of it." Danny helps him to his feet, a loose hand on his shoulder and another on his arm, and Ward comes along like he's being drawn by a magnet.

"I'm not," he tries to explain, as Danny draws him, reeling, back to the bed ... which now has fresh sheets on it, crisp and clean-smelling, and he sinks into them as if he's falling into a heap of feathers. "Oh, _God,"_ he moans. Everything is just _more_ when you're in heat, and the brush of clean sheets and clean clothes on his skin is almost orgasmic. This is what it's _supposed_ to be like, except the lights are too bright and he feels uncomfortably exposed on the bed. He should have made some kind of proper nest beforehand, but he just didn't think about it -- he just doesn't _know._ He's done this so rarely. He'd probably have had to look up nest-building instructions on the internet, which is just fucking embarrassing.

"What's wrong? Oh ..." Danny gets up and turns the lights off, and the prickling pain eases. Ward sinks into the pillows with a groan. 

"Want me to leave?" Danny asks.

Ward rolls over and gives him an incredulous look. "No, I don't want you to leave, what's wrong with -- just get over here, would you?"

He flinches, then; he can't help it, all his emotions are so close to the surface, and there's a tangled mess of feelings that includes the too-acute knowledge that just about any alpha would have punished him for that kind of backtalk. Harold was never _his_ alpha per se; it wasn't like that ... but Harold had never shied away from punishing him during heats, either, when Ward was at his most sensitive and vulnerable. And some of the alphas Harold had dredged up for him ... best not to think of that.

But Danny just comes over and sits on the edge of the bed. "Yeah, okay," he says, and plants a hand on Ward's back, pressing him down against the bed. It's gentle and yet commanding, and Ward can feel his entire body relaxing underneath it, his mind going utterly still as Danny adds, "Ward. You're not well. Rest."

"Stay," Ward whispers. It skirts perilously close to a command, and also perilously close to begging, and even he doesn't know which, not exactly. 

But Danny settles down beside him. The hand stays on his back, and it's joined by Danny's entire body, a warm weight at Ward's side, pressing against him. He shivers, and closes his eyes.

*

He wakes in the dark, to a shivering wave of sexual urgency that rolls through him, prickling his skin with sweat. It's a close cousin to drug withdrawal, but not quite the same -- not _bad,_ just urgent. Powerful. Like having a massive hand clutch his insides, squeezing with a tightening grip of need.

"Ward?" Danny says, out of the dark. Oh god, Danny is still here. It triggers a crashing wave of relief and an equally powerful surge of humiliated despair, because he can feel that the drugs are wearing off, and he has absolutely no idea what he's going to do or say.

He can feel Danny's warm body against him, pressed to his side from shoulders to feet. When Danny props himself up on his elbows, Ward can feel the muscles flexing all the way down his body.

"How are you feeling?" Danny asks.

"Oh, fine," Ward says automatically, and Danny huffs out a soft laugh. 

Ward sits up. It's a little bit of a surprise to find out that he has more control without the drugs, not less. His body is still a knotted-up coil of sexual urgency, but he's not as heat-addled as he was expecting. Maybe it's wearing off, he thinks with a last, desperate hope; maybe they can get through this without irrevocably breaking their relationship.

"So I need, uh ... bathroom," he manages to say in some vague approximation of a normal voice, and Danny slides out of the way, moving gracefully aside in the hints of soft citylight coming in through the blinds. And Danny's only wearing a tank top and boxers, probably because Ward is pouring off heat like a furnace, but the half-nudity really, _really_ does not help.

Ward stumbles through the dark bedroom and pushes into the bathroom. He's mostly on autopilot, just needing to get away from Danny for a few minutes to jerk off in privacy, thanks.

But the bathroom is no escape, and he realizes it even as he closes the door, shutting him into the close, absolute blackness. The bathroom absolutely reeks of Danny, and more than that, it smells like sex, a heated musky alpha-smell.

Danny's been jerking off in here, while Ward slept. With his senses on a razor edge like they are right now, everything heightened beyond belief, there is absolutely no doubt.

That's enough to bring him off, all by itself. He comes so hard he sees stars.

He jerks off three more times, and that's not enough, not _nearly_ enough, but at least he's coming down a little bit. He cleans up in the dark and washes his hands, then drinks some water from his cupped palms. The entire time he's fully expecting Danny to knock on the door, but the anticipated knock never comes. Danny is leaving him perfectly alone in here.

Danny is by far the strangest alpha that Ward has ever met in his life.

He jerks off a couple more times and cleans up again and gives serious thought to just staying in here for the duration of the heat. He's got the sink and the shower and basically everything he needs.

Except Danny.

Danny, who is out there, in his apartment. Danny, who hasn't left, the way everybody else always leaves when they come face to face with how much of a fucked-up mess Ward really is.

But Danny doesn't. Danny never has. It doesn't matter how messy and awful Ward is; Danny just keeps coming back.

Ward leans against the wall, resting his face against his arm. The wetness of tears startles him. That's another thing he hates about heats: the urgent, close-to-the-surface emotions. He splashes water on his face, has another drink, jerks off one more time just thinking about lying down on the bed next to Danny, then washes his hands _again_ and resolutely leaves the bathroom.

After the pitch blackness of the bathroom, the bedroom seems relatively bright, even with just the cast glow of streetlights striping the bed and the wall through the blinds. Danny is stretched out on the bed, visible mainly by the dark slash of his black tank top and a pale tangle of curls on the pillow, but he rolls over and sits up when he hears Ward.

"Hi," Danny says casually, like he can't smell sex all over Ward, like what Ward was just doing in there isn't going to be exactly as obvious to Danny as Danny's earlier adventures in the bathroom were to Ward.

Getting to be this close to Danny is _almost_ like sex, he tells himself, and oh god, his body is cramping with need again. Resolutely, drawing on the self-control that got him through all those years with Dad, he circles around to the other side of the bed so he doesn't have to climb over Danny, and sits down on top of the sheets.

Is there even any point to lying back down? He's just going to end up in the bathroom, jerking off again.

"You feeling okay?" Danny asks, and Ward turns toward him. 

They're only a couple of feet apart. He can scent Danny from here, and it's making it worse.

And then something in him just _snaps._ He may as well be the bad guy here. It's not like he never has before.

"Fuck me," he says.

The room isn't quite light enough to make out Danny's expression, but there is a quick intake of breath, and the bright gleam of Danny's eyes. Then Danny says, "Is that a general statement or a request?"

"What do you think? You can smell me, can't you?" The words tumble out, now that the decision is made. "I'm done. Let's stop dancing around this. Just fuck me and let's get this done."

"Ward ..." Danny huffs a soft breath, and Ward's glad he can't see what's on Danny's face. "Ward, you're not in a position to make a decision like that."

"Oh, you pick _now_ to throw the fucking omega thing in my face --"

"Ward!" Danny says, sounding both exasperated and fond in a way that is so unbelievably _Danny_ that Ward could almost fall over just from the hot surge of emotions it sparks in him. "It's not that! You're in _heat._ Of course you want sex, that's normal."

"So you're, what, not going to give it to me because I want it?" Ward asks in annoyed disbelief. Compared to the dull haze of the suppressants earlier, he feels starkly clearheaded. He's desperately horny, and distracted by the intensity of feeling all over his body, but it's not ... it's a matter of _degree,_ not of type. He can recognize the difference now between himself in heat, and himself on the suppressants. The drugs were genuinely fucking with him, same as always, but now that they've cleared out of his system, he still feels like himself, just a version of himself that's distractingly horny and wants to pour himself all over Danny Rand.

"I don't want to take advantage," Danny begins awkwardly.

"Well, if the answer's no, forget it, then." Ward throws himself down on the bed. Feeling shitty has always made him a pissy asshole, and while he doesn't exactly feel _bad_ at the moment, actually kind of the opposite, it's having a similar effect.

 _"Ward,"_ Danny says in that familiar tone of exasperated affection, and Ward has to squeeze his eyes shut with the sheer, overwhelming ache of how much he wants Danny right then.

He rolls away, turning his back to Danny.

"Oh, come on Ward, stop that." Danny is half-laughing and half-irritated, and it's the hottest thing in existence, especially when his hand settles on Ward's arm, warm and tingling on the bare skin below his T-shirt sleeve.

Ward tenses up and reaches down inside himself for reserves of strength and resolutely turns himself so Danny is confronted with nothing except his shoulders.

"You're literally in bed, with me, and you're making me chase you," Danny says in a tone that's a blend of annoyed and amused and warm that Ward finds unbearably hot. "You are unbelievable."

Ward lets out his breath in a shuddering sigh. His entire body is one wound-up ball of need. He bites his lip so hard he tastes blood. "If you're not interested, you're not interested," he says between his teeth.

"Are you going for some sort of weird chase here, or are you actually offended?" Danny leans in, and as he does, Ward can feel the corresponding shudder in Danny's body, the coiled-wire intensity of his self-control. Danny is fighting as hard as Ward is, he's just more graceful about it, because of course he is; he's Danny.

"Nobody even does chases anymore, you're twenty fucking years out of date," Ward gets out. He can feel Danny's breath on the back of his neck.

Danny laughs quietly, and Ward feels Danny's forehead press against his shoulder for a moment. "I want you," he says quietly, and the spasm that passes through Ward almost brings him off then and there. "But I'm not doing anything you don't want, wholly and completely. Not ever. You've had enough of that in your life."

Ward is still and rigid for a long shuddering moment, and then he rolls over with a sudden flood of words: "You fucking idiot, I already asked you in small English words, so how do you want me to say it, exactly -- do you just want me to roll you over and fuck _you,_ because I fucking _will_ , don't think I won't --"

Danny's breath seizes on a peal of bright laughter, and he catches Ward by the shoulders, and there's a brief struggle that Ward, of course, loses, because Danny's obviously better at hand-to-hand even when Ward is actually trying to win. Danny rolls on top of him and it's all Ward can do to stop his eyes from rolling back in his head.

"You're so weird," Danny says, his chest heaving against Ward's as he catches his breath in short sharp gasps.

"Takes one to know one," Ward manages, strangled. He's so turned on that he's probably going to die right here, and it'll be worth it.

"Mmmm," and Danny's hand strokes through Ward's sweat-damp hair and then tangles in it, and Ward stares up at him and bucks his hips up against Danny's in the most blatant display he's got in him right now, and Danny laughs again and lunges and catches Ward's mouth with his own, his teeth bruising Ward's lips. It's probably going to be something Danny will apologize for when he sees the bruises tomorrow, but right now all Ward cares about is that Danny is finally acting like an actual human being rather than an ascetic monk, and he just wants Danny to fuck him until he can't walk straight.

*

It's possible, Ward thinks dazedly, during one of the times when he manages to come up for air, that all the unsatisfying sex, all those fumbling heats he barely remembers, were only that awful because it was supposed to be _this._ Heat is so different with an alpha who cares about their omega's pleasure, and not just what they can get out of it. He didn't know it could be like this.

*

He wakes up gradually, sated and comfortable and no longer burning with need, in a bed that's thoroughly rumpled and smells of sex so powerfully that it takes him a moment to realize that the intensity of his senses is muted somewhat. He feels wet and achy and bruised and deeply, deeply satisfied.

After a long while of just lying there, breathing in Danny's scent, he becomes aware that Danny isn't in the bed with him. Raising his head, he waits out a head rush, and then he smells something fried and _amazing._

Wrapped in a bathrobe, he wobbles out into the living room to find that Danny is making pancakes.

"Oh, hi," Danny says, turning a bright smile on him that makes every part of Ward melt into soft warm putty. "Are you hungry?"

"Are you kidding," Ward says, and Danny just grins and shoves a plate of pancakes at him.

It's a while later, when the dishes are in the sink and they're both lying on the soft plush carpet of Ward's floor, that it suddenly occurs to him that he's gone missing from work for -- what? Two days? Three?

"The company," he says, raising his head, and Danny pushes him back down.

"Settle down." Danny runs a hand lightly up and down Ward's chest, underneath the bathrobe. "Your assistant knows what's going on."

"Katie. Yeah." After a minute he raises his head. "You talked to her?"

"Little bit." Danny strokes a hand through Ward's hair. "She's nice. I like her."

"You like literally everybody."

Danny laughs quietly, and rolls over to rub his head against Ward's shoulder. "Even if that was true, which it's not, I especially like people who like you."

He's such a weird alpha. Ward is pretty sure that Danny is the weirdest alpha he's ever met. He's impossibly omega-ish, at least going off stereotypical omega traits -- he's warm, he's empathic, he just wants to rub all over anything he likes.

But he's also entirely capable of taking charge and putting down the surliest omega, as Ward knows full well from the last day or so. The memory of Danny's sure, strong hands moving him into position -- into positions he never even knew he was capable of -- is as powerful a reminder as the stretched and pleasantly aching muscles.

"How long has it been since your last heat, anyway?" Danny asks lazily.

"Don't know," Ward murmurs. "Uh, maybe seven or eight years ago."

"Ward!" Danny pulls away from petting him, and props himself up on his elbow. "That's dangerous."

"Well, when was I going to?" Ward asks, rallying himself somewhat. "Between Dad and the drugs and all the rest of it ..."

He's pushed down, then, as Danny rolls over on top of him and kisses him, kisses and kisses him like Danny's mouth can wash away the taste of the drugs and the booze and those cheap alphas-for-hire that Dad would bring back for him to "take care of it." Ward closes his eyes and ... it _does_ actually, is the crazy part; it makes him feel so much less cheap and dirty, so much more ... loved, desired, _claimed._

He opens his eyes after a few minutes when the kissing stops. Danny is still on top of him, but propped up a little, looking down at Ward with a warm light in his soft eyes. His weight is nice, resting across Ward's chest. Danny isn't that heavy or that big. Just ... there, filling his entire world. 

One of Danny's bare feet is lightly chafing against Ward's ankle. Ward isn't still as hypersensitive as he was during the height of his heat, but there's still an extra-intense edge to everything, especially the touch of Danny's skin against his.

"So now what?" Ward asks, and Danny's lightly twitching foot stills against him.

"Does there have to be a _now what?"_ Danny shifts his weight slightly so he can rest on his elbow and run a hand through Ward's hair. Ward is becoming a little too aware that he's been having sex pretty much nonstop. Danny, though ... Danny's showered, and he smells clean and a little soapy and incredibly nice and ... okay, this is _not_ where Ward's mind needs to be going right now.

He pushes, not hard, but Danny rolls off him instantly and sits up. Ward does too, pushing himself so that his back is against the side of the kitchen island. He misses Danny's weight immediately.

"Are you upset?" Danny asks.

Ward can't help huffing out a little laugh at the worried look on Danny's face, but he also wants to reach out and wipe that look away. He's caused Danny far too much distress already, over the last couple of years. "No, no. It's fine. I just don't know how this is supposed to go. The morning after. I haven't had much experience with it."

"What happened before?" Danny asks, his brows drawing together in a puzzled frown. "With your other alphas. Or whoever got you through it -- you couldn't have done it all alone."

"They left." 

He says it matter-of-factly and he doesn't think it comes out plaintive, but something in Danny's face _crumples_ a little. _"Ward,"_ he says, and before Ward really knows what hit him, Danny is wrapping his arms around him and hugging him, burying his face in Ward's neck.

Ward awkwardly pats his back. He's just far enough past the heat to be starting to feel a little weird about this kind of blatant emotional display. Alpha hormones are clearly still getting to Danny quite a bit, that caretaker/protector thing. "Look, it's the past, okay?" he says through a mouthful of Danny's curly hair. "Pfeh. Listen, it's just that ... I mean, we have to run the company together, I don't want it to be weird."

"You want it to stop, then?" Danny asks. He pulls back but doesn't let go of Ward, just twists gracefully in that double-jointed way he has so that he's propped against the kitchen island beside Ward.

"Well, I mean ..." God, he hates talking about this stuff. He's so bad at it. He always has been. "You got me through it and I'm glad. Really, Danny, I am. That was --" _Amazing. Everything I always heard a heat could be, everything I always thought was made up to put a romantic gloss on a pure biological need._ "... better than it could have been, a _lot_ better, and I'm grateful, I am, but --"

Danny laid a finger on Ward's lips, stopping him. "I don't want gratitude, Ward." He sounds almost angry, and now Ward has no idea where this conversation is going. "It's not about gratitude. You were ... you were _sick,_ and you didn't tell me. You scared me. You could've died."

"People don't die from heats," Ward muttered. "It's just uncomfortable."

"People die from those drugs. I looked it up. Does our company _make_ those? We're going to stop."

Ward sighs and leans his head back against the counter with a faint clunk. "Okay, so it wasn't a great decision, all right? I admit that. I wasn't thinking clearly, and you had to spend _your_ time taking care of your idiot business partner who overdosed on heat suppressants. Happy?"

"Ward ...!" 

Ward is still just enough under the influence of lingering heat hormones that Danny's obvious irritation hits him like a slap. "Do you really think a business partner is all you are to me? Of course you do," he mutters before Ward can answer, and scrubs his hands through his hair, scruffing it into a wild profusion of curls. "Ward, I don't do this for every omega I meet, you know? Or _any_ omegas. I've almost never helped someone with a heat before. And you ... it's ...." 

He draws in a shuddering breath, and Ward realizes with increasing distress that Danny is really upset. And _that_ sparks off something deep inside him. It's not an omega wanting to comfort his alpha, or at least not just that. It's because it's _Danny._

"Hey." Ward hugs him, and Danny melts bonelessly into him, the way Ward's been wanting to do with _him_ ever since waking up. It's a reminder that they're not always alpha and omega, they never really have been; they're _them,_ and it's always a two-way street. He cautiously strokes Danny's hair, and Danny gives a happy little sigh.

Has Danny always wanted to be touched this much? Ward never felt like he could or should. But it feels as natural as breathing now. He lets out a slow breath, and rests his face in Danny's hair, breathing him in.

"I don't want ..." he mumbles into Danny's hair. "I don't want to _break_ things. It's taken us so much to get here." It feels like he's teetering along the edge of a cliff. It's so hard to talk about this. They've generally dealt with so much of their past by just not bringing it up.

"You won't," Danny says into his neck. "You can't."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Danny pulls back, and Ward is shocked to see that Danny's eyes are wet, although he's smiling. "Because," Danny says, "I'm your alpha, and I won't let you."

 _Your alpha._ Those words shiver all the way down to his core, wrapping around something broken and wounded -- mending it, making it whole. What really does it to him, though, is the way Danny's face immediately turns anxious and worried.

"... if you want me to be," Danny adds. "I mean, I don't know how good I'll be at it, I don't have much practice -- mmph!"

Turns out kissing Danny is a great way to shut him up. Who knew.

They end up tangled together on the floor, with Ward's bathrobe half off him. Ward doesn't really want sex right now, isn't sure he could take more sex, honestly. But he wants to sink into the feeling of Danny's warm, solid body against his, and never come up for air.

Except of course his mind is still working, and as they lie there on the carpet, wrapped up in each other, Ward says thoughtfully, "I'll need to get Katie started working on contracts. We can't just dive into this, especially with the company. There's so much."

"Of course you would think of that right now," Danny mutters, his lips brushing Ward's neck.

"What? It's important! There are so many things we need to think about, if we're going to be doing this regularly." God. Doing it regularly. He can have normal heats again, might even eventually catch -- but he shies desperately away from that thought. Kids. With Danny. God.

It won't be this time anyway. Omegas are almost never fertile after a long heat drought, and the suppressants would have knocked out that possibility anyway. But it _can_ happen, eventually, and he can feel a sudden world of possibilities opening up in front of him, endless and vast and suddenly more welcome than anything he's been able to imagine for his future in a very long time.

"Ward?" Danny asks, a warm voice like a rope thrown out into the dark, drawing Ward back from the reverie of his own thoughts. "You got really quiet for a minute there. You okay?"

"Contracts," Ward mutters, "we are going to need _so_ many contracts for all of this," and Danny laughs and closes his mouth over Ward's.


End file.
